this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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Thermianism can be fun, it's the selectivity that gets me. The fact that so many Trekkies will more readily accept FTL than a moneyless society is... something.
You know I never really thought of it from that perspective before. That is kind of insane. I guess not super surprising. With every Trek and something new people get really upset about something that is different than what they're used to. Why wouldn't that apply to certain parts of the whole core concept? Does seem like it requires some loopy cognitive dissonance to get to that.
I could see an argument that FTL merely requires some different or undiscovered physics, or for something vaguely plausible but not likely to actually work out like the alcubierre drive (funnily enough not too dissimilar from warp drive even) to prove actually doable, but an economic system that seems incompatible with human nature requires the species as a whole to be different, which they arent really stated to be in trek. Of course the system star trek has honestly probably isnt that incompatible anyway, with a high enough population (and a star empire should have an absolutely huge one) and lots of automation, even if a tiny fraction are willing to do high risk exploration or military esque work just out of some sense of duty, that tiny fraction is still a ton of people.
This is the crux of your argument but it doesn't hold up at all.
The first problem is that you're relying on the fact that humanity doesn't evolve or change which is just patently untrue. The level of difference we have today from 100 years ago is stark. That would only grow. Moreover, humanity in the Trek universe is rocked by several severe catastrophes which you aren't taking into account. Moments like that cause communities to knit together more strongly. Not to mention that they would annihilate any economic systems that really exist in the first place. Systems that we only invented rather recently, I might add, and are not fundamental to the development or furthering of the species, especially with outside help.
The second thing is way more simple. You're saying that it requires the species as a whole to be different but you're disregarding the fact that the Federation is NOT a Human-Only organization.
But this is also just cycling back to the first point. You're willing to say "Yeah FTL is based off of something we don't understand" but you're ignoring the fact that the future could be equally based off of something you do not understand. It's a weighted comparison.
Im not actually arguing that their system is incompatible with humans, Im arguing that someone who did think it was wouldn't necessarily see a contradiction in viewing such a system as unrealistic even though the setting has ftl.
My mistake on misunderstanding there, my apologies. Sleep eludes me lately.
I understand that feeling
There's a few reasons why the advanced technology might be easier to accept without question than the society without money.
FTL and other advanced technologies are core elements that are essential to the premise and genre, things which you are asked to accept right up front. Those same elements might very well be hard to accept if they weren't part of the show from the beginning, and therefore were not part of your expectations. You would probably have a lot of people get pissed if they showed up in a Lord of the Rings movie or a typical police procedural, just like you would probably piss off a lot of people introducing real magic, ghosts, and angels in Star Trek.
Advanced technology is in every episode. Trekonomics is not. Something that is constant is probably going to become tolerated and/or ignored fairly quickly, or it's likely to drive me away and I probably don't become a fan. Something that pops up occasionally stands out that much more because it is only there occasionally.
The average person is going to find it easier to have nerdy delight in robots, spaceships, and pew pew lasers, rather than economics. We are much more accepting of the things we like.
Most people have very little personal, hands on experience with space travel and the obstacles to FTL. But the audience generally does have experience dealing with other people, including the types of interaction that involve money, labor, goods, services, favors, bartering and so on. Accepting something that goes against what you know on a purely intellectual level is a lot easier than accepting something that you feel contradicts your lived experience.
They talk about trade and commerce all the time, which can seem contradictory to the whole lack of money thing. Bones says he has money in Star Trek 3, but as soon as Kirk can't pay for pizza in Star Trek 4, we don't have money in the future. But we still visit alien worlds and buy things at markets, negotiate trade agreements, and so on. It's similar to how I can accept a seemingly endless stream of ridiculous sci-fi concepts in Stargate SG-1, but I can't just accept the lack of explanation for why everyone speaks English, because they have a linguist on the team and keep drawing attention to the fact that there are also alien languages.*
Because the science behind the advanced technologies is very soft, mostly handwaved with technobabble, and therefore there isn't much substance to pick at. Ships go really fast because they do, and there's no larger implications to that because communication is instantaneous somehow, as are sensors I guess. Any nitpicks that come up beyond that can be handwaved away with more random nonsense pretending to mean something, the technobabble giveth and the technobabble taketh away. Because money, trade, labor and the distribution of goods and services touches almost everything in one way or another, the complexities of civilization as a whole are there for a critic to work with and extrapolate from. Replicators solve many problems, but there's still jobs that must be done which are unpleasant and which few people would find fulfilling. The federation has not relied on robots for most such tasks, and when such things do come up, it's almost always presented in a negative light. Why does the Picard family get a whole vineyard, and who decides how land can be used and who gets to live where? Is there really no conflict over any of this? And even if we just accept that humans have "evolved" beyond such things, what about immigrants from other worlds with other cultures? If earth is such a paradise, one would expect a lot of people on other worlds to want to move there. There's only so much room on the planet, especially if we want to leave nature intact.... and I could go on.
* Start Trek isn't immune to the language thing either, even with the universal translator. Why do Klingons switch in and out of Klingonese, even when on their homeworld, at their official hearings surrounded by their own people?
That is a fascinating observation. FTL, replicators, transporters, etc. DS9 kind of ruined the illusion since they toyed with latinum so much with the Ferengis